Head to your navigation bar, click Business Setup and choose System Data from the list. Once there, you’ll see Departments, Work Centers, Equipment, and Operations.
Notion - Intro, Business Setup.mp4
Let’s begin with equipment. Equipment within Fulcrum is defined as your machinery and workstations.
Most often, equipment is going to be straightforward. For example, you might enter Press Brake, Waterjet, Laser Cutter, and CNC Mill. Set up each piece of equipment with a name consistent with what you will call it while talking to your operators on the shop floor.
Notes: This field is optional. Here, you could enter any information about this piece of equipment such as maintenance timelines, purchase date, etc.
Manufacturer, Model Number, and Serial Number: These fields are also optional. Here, you could enter the manufacturer, model number, and serial number for record keeping purposes if desired.
Equipment Status: You can use the status of equipment to take it out of service for things like maintenance/repair. When marked as “Out of Service,” the schedule will reorganize jobs based on what equipment remains in an operational status. Jobs can still be scheduled if a piece of equipment is marked as “Good,” “Poor,” or “Bad;” the system reads these three statuses as operational.
Can Run Unattended: This setting is for equipment that can be setup by a human and then left unattended to finish the operation, e.g., a CNC Lathe. This setting is also for equipment that runs “after hours” or outside of defined shift hours.
Unlimited Capacity: This would be set if the equipment can run simultaneous jobs. For example, having a paint booth where you can paint multiple jobs all at once or an oven where many different jobs can be cured all at once.
<aside> 💡 There may be certain operations within your workflow that do not require a specific machine to be completed. For example, operations such as Assembly or Inspection that are typically done at a table or desk. For these operations, you could set that table/desk as the equipment. The operation, Assembly, would be completed at Assembly Station 1 (the equipment).
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Notion - Business Setup, Equipment.mp4
Once your equipment has been created in Fulcrum, we’ll set up your departments. Who will be working within a certain area of your shop floor, what will their shift be, and what pieces of equipment will they be able to work on throughout their shift? Departments are best thought of in terms of personnel constraints. ****
When it comes to the schedule, equipment will have jobs scheduled underneath them according to due date and priority, and all of this will live under the department to accurately schedule each job according to shifts.
In some businesses, everyone on the shop floor moves between equipment throughout the day - this would be a case for setting up a single department.
Other shops may have specific equipment that specific people will work on during their shift - this would be a case for setting up multiple departments.
Once you have your department(s), we’ll set up your Work Centers. A Fulcrum Work Center is defined as a group of interchangeable equipment with similar capabilities.
For example: A CNC Lathe and Manual Lathe could be grouped together in a singular Lathe Work Center. Both pieces of equipment can perform the same task. In the case where you have a unique piece of equipment on the shop floor, with no other machinery that can do similar work, you would put that single piece of equipment in a Work Center by itself.
Work Centers are one area where you will set up your hourly setup, labor, and machine rates as well as your burdened labor/setup rates.
<aside> ‼️ If you are coming from JobBOSS or E2, you will find that Fulcrum’s concept of a Work Center differs from that of a JobBOSS/E2 Work Center. In Fulcrum, you will be scheduling to equipment. The Work Center tells the schedule what equipment can be used for a specific operation.
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For instance: within the Lathe Work Center, you’ll attach both the CNC Lathe and the manual lathe since both pieces of equipment can handle the same work. Of note, when building out a BOM/routing, you have the ability to specify a specific piece of machinery within a Work Center if that job/situation calls for using the CNC Lathe instead of the Manual Lathe.
Work Center: Vertical CNC Machining
Equipment: Haas VF3, Haas VF4SS
Work Center: Waterjet Cutting
Equipment: OMAX 2652, OMAX 60120
Moving on to operations, these will be what tasks you’re completing. There are a couple of things to consider when thinking about how you want to create your operations. Is this something you want to track time against? You may find yourself in a situation where there are significant packing steps involved in a given assembly. Maybe you need to create a pallet in order to ship something. This may be a reason to create a “packing” operation in the routing. Also, who is doing the work? A CNC operator that takes a part off of the machine only to quickly deburr the item may call for a combined “Mill and Deburr” step. Think about how much time you want your people to be spending clocking in and out of operations, but also how much data you want to track.
With our lathe example, the operation will be turning. You can specify which work center this operation will be done in, and adding the work center will automatically populate the pieces of equipment for you as well. Each operation can have specific pieces of equipment it can be completed on, and you also have the ability to add standard setup, labor, and machine times. Some other settings include “can run unattended”, buffer time (which will add a specified amount of time to the end of an operation - typically for things like dry time after painting), operation splitting (do you need to split an operation between two pieces of equipment to complete it faster), and simultaneous equipment scheduling (is this an operation that takes additional resources, and therefore takes other pieces of equipment offline while it’s running).
There are three different areas you can choose from to set production costs within Fulcrum: at the User level, Operation level, and Work Center level. User level rates will only be used to calculate actual job costs, i.e., when an operator is clocked into a job and performing work.
Operation or Work Center rates will be used to calculate estimated and actual costs. If rates are entered in all three areas, the system will first use User rates, then Operation, and finally Work Center; it will not combine rates. See below for more detail into each costing category.
Work Centers costs are available for you to enter averages of your hourly cost rates. Each work center you set will give you the ability to set a setup rate, labor rate, machine rate (when Machine Time toggle is turned on), and/or overhead rate. These costs are defined as the costs to produce by the hour. This is NOT what you charge by the hour for work done on this equipment.
These costing rates will be used to calculate the following :
Machine time refers to the duration of time when equipment runs without requiring an operator's presence. The costing rate applied during this period can be significantly lower than when an operator is physically present (labor time) performing tasks at the machine.
<aside> <img src="/icons/checkmark_green.svg" alt="/icons/checkmark_green.svg" width="40px" /> The schedule uses machine time to block off time for an operation. If additional time needs to be tracked for the operator's physical presence to perform a task, labor time is used for cost calculation.
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You can also set your hourly costs at the operation level if certain operations within each work center have higher or lower costs than others. For example, you would likely have different costs for basic welding vs. advanced welding.
You can now define labor rates for each operator on their user setup page. If set, user-level rates prevail and are used in actual job cost calculations. If an operator does not have a user-level rate defined, we use the existing work center rates (current behavior). If multiple operators work on a job and have different user-level rates, the rate displayed in the actual costs will reflect a blended (weighted average) rate. Estimates will still be based on work center rates.
Moving on to operations, these will be what tasks you’re completing. There are a couple of things to consider when thinking about how you want to create your operations. Is this something you want to track time against? You may find yourself in a situation where there are significant packing steps involved in a given assembly. Maybe you need to create a pallet in order to ship something. This may be a reason to create a “packing” operation in the routing. Also, who is doing the work? A CNC operator that takes a part off of the machine only to quickly deburr the item may call for a combined “Mill and Deburr” step. Think about how much time you want your people to be spending clocking in and out of operations, but also how much data you want to track.
With our lathe example, the operation will be turning. You can specify which work center this operation will be done in, and adding the work center will automatically populate the pieces of equipment for you as well. Each operation can have specific pieces of equipment it can be completed on, and you also have the ability to add standard setup, labor, and machine times. Some other settings include “can run unattended”, buffer time (which will add a specified amount of time to the end of an operation - typically for things like dry time after painting), operation splitting (do you need to split an operation between two pieces of equipment to complete it faster), and simultaneous equipment scheduling (is this an operation that takes additional resources, and therefore takes other pieces of equipment offline while it’s running).
Material Prep (Department)
Saws (Work Center)
Wilton Shark 320sx; Band Saw (Equipment)
Shop Floor (Department)
Bend; Mill; Fab (Work Centers)
Amada EG4010 & HD1303; Doosan 4500; Haas VF4; Weld Bays 1, 2, & 3 (Equipment)
Quality (Department)
Inspection (Work Center)
QC Station 1 & 2; Stress Tester (Equipment)
<aside> 💡 All of these parameters will be used to determine your capacity during the week in which operations can be scheduled. In summary, your system data setup will affect many different parts of your Fulcrum site. Taking the time to set this up appropriately will set you up for success!
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